


I want to tell you

by CaptainNightGale



Series: The songs our lives sing [3]
Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Adrinette, F/M, LadyNoir - Freeform, Or try to, They Tried, They talk, Yet another song fic, it almost happened
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-18
Updated: 2017-07-18
Packaged: 2018-12-03 21:29:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11540781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaptainNightGale/pseuds/CaptainNightGale
Summary: Marinette really wants to tell Adrien something.Chat Noir wants to tell Ladybug something.Heck if either of them are going to succeed, though





	I want to tell you

Marinette waits (for once) outside the school, rather than blindly dashing in. She’s here early, too early, and now all she can do is wait.  
There’s a restless energy within her that makes her want to transform, to take to the sky and the rooftops and _fly_ , and work it all out until she can focus. But she doesn’t, because she’s hoping it’ll help. That this will finally, _finally_ be the day that she can tell Adrien.  
Instead, she jigs her leg against the ground, not quite starting to pace. She has her notebook on her knee, but nothing’s been drawn in it; she’s too panicky to focus on anything but _oh god this is the day, this is it and I will tell him and–_  
“Hey, girl!” Alya calls up to her, and Marinette jumps, just about flying off the wall she’d been perched on.  
“Alya! Hi. Hey, how’s it going, how are you?” Marinette claps her mouth shut before she rambles on too long.  
Alya raises an eyebrow. “You’re here early.”  
“I’m going to do it,” Marinette replies, crouching to pick her notebook from the ground. “I’m going to tell Adrien.”  
“You’re going to – you’re actually going to tell him?” Alya’s eyes grow wide, and then she grins. “Get it, girl! You can do it!”  
Marinette smiles and puts her notebook away in her bag. “Thanks, Alya.”  
Other pupils are filing into the school past them, and the two of them wave to classmates as they pass by.  
“How long?”  
Marinette checks her phone for the time. “Two and a half minutes.”  
“Hey, Nino!” Alya waves him over. “Guess what?”  
Nino pulls his headphones down about his neck. “… what?” He glances between the two of them, cautious. “Is the bakery on fire?”  
Marinette can’t exactly blame him.  
“No, no – Mari here’s going to tell Adrien!”  
“Tell him – oh. _Oh_.” Nino stares between them. “Are you – sure?” He reaches out to squeeze Marinette’s shoulder. “She didn’t put you up to this?”  
“Hey!”  
“No.” Marinette smiles, laughing. “No, I – I decided it. By myself. No Alya intervention required.” After a long chat with Tikki. She just had to channel Ladybug, that was all.  
And ignore the fact that _Ladybug_ had just as massive a crush on Adrien and was only _marginally_ better at keeping her words straight around him.  
“Proud of you, girl.” Alya squeezes her about the shoulders.  
Marinette smiles, leaning into her hug. She stiffens as she hears a car draw up, and doesn’t even have to look to know that it’s Adrien’s limo and he’s _early_. Not by much, but enough to throw her off because she _isn’t ready_ (and how could – how was _anyone_ ever _ready_ to do this, surely other people had difficulty and weren’t prepared and–).  
“You got this,” Alya whispers, releasing her and pushing her slightly towards the road to meet Adrien, taking her bag from her at the same time.  
Marinette stumbles (of course) but somehow actually manages to catch herself before she falls down the steps, and meets Adrien at the bottom. Tikki presses at her leg from inside her purse, and Marinette takes a deep breath. She’s Ladybug. She can do this.  
“Hey, K – Adrien! You’re Adrien.” She corrects herself, overcorrects herself because yes she’s Ladybug but _Adrien isn’t Chat so don’t use his nicknames._  
Adrien is – confused. Brow furrowed. “Yes? Hi, Marinette.”  
“Hi.” She smiles, throwing up an awkward wave as she clutches at her purse with her other hand. “Hi, I had – how are you – something to – there’s – it’s important–” She clips her mouth shut and looks away, _feeling_ her cheeks beginning to burn.  
“You have something you want to tell me?” Adrien asks, gently.  
“Y – no, I – Yes! Yes.” Marinette fights with herself, with the urge to turn tail and run. She is Ladybug and she _doesn’t run_. Not from bad guys, not from Adrien.  
He’s waiting, an eyebrow half raised.  
“I – I have something. To tell you. About–” She can’t do this. Every carefully planned word is draining away, leaving her with mindless panic and jitters that had her bouncing on the spot.  
Adrien steps back, giving her more room. But he glances down and _oh god her hands are fists, does he think she’s going to_ hurt _him?_  
“Bye,” she blurts out, and _runs_.  
“Hey – Mari!”  
She can hear Alya calling after her, but she just has to get away from the mess she’s made. How will she _ever_ face him again? She’d be better changing schools, skipping the country – what a _mess_! And she’d wanted to say it all, so badly, but – but the words slipped away, as soon as he was near and she just… she just confused things.  
Marinette ducks into an alley and folds in on herself against the wall, behind a dumpster.  
“Oh, Marinette,” Tikki says, emerging to press cool hands to Marinette’s cheek. “You almost had it!”  
“No – no I didn’t, Tikki. I messed up. He’ll _hate_ me!”  
“He won’t hate you.”  
“Yes he will, I made a _fool_ of myself and he’ll think I hate him and–” Marinette screams.  
“Mari?”  
Oh god, it’s Adrien. He’s looking for her.  
Marinette keeps her silence, a hand clapped over her mouth and Tikki holding onto one of her pigtails.  
Adrien is standing at the entrance of the alley, she can see his shadow against the opposite wall. He hesitates there, then sighs and turns away. Back towards the school.  
Marinette lets out a shuddering sigh and meets Tikki's eyes.  
“What are you waiting for? Go on,” Tikki urges, gesturing out onto the street.  
Marinette shakes her head, and then – “Spots on!”  
Ladybug launches herself out of the alley and up onto the roof tops, away and away and _away_. There’s no way she’s going to school today, but –  
But where else does she go?

///

Chat noir pulls open a window of the classroom and ducks out, using his staff to propel himself over to the next building.  
Marinette hadn't turned up at all, and he was worried. What if she'd been turned into an akuma? Although if she had, she was being very quiet about it. No akuma had ever taken a whole morning before announcing themself.  
He went towards the bakery first, in case she had just headed home. "Princess?" He drops through the trap door and onto her bed, looking around.  
No sign of her.  
He drops down again, to the floor, in case she was hiding under her bed, or behind the chaise longue or... something.  
The number of pictures of _him_ had – no, scratch that, they hadn’t. There were just as many of his non-masked, posed-and-airbrushed as all hell face, but at least there were other models (and other designers) there too.  
And Marinette definitely wasn't here.  
He clambers back through the trap door onto her balcony and hesitates. Should he ask her parents? But he didn't want to worry them unduly. And appearing as Chat Noir... definitely would do that. Adrien would be more convincing.  
Chat drops down into an alley and releases his transformation.  
Plagg dives into his pocket with only minimal grumbling; Adrien doesn’t listen too closely as he ducks out and heads for the bakery door.  
The bakery is busy, but not completely packed out. Adrien weaves through the customers to the corner of the counter, and waits to be noticed.  
It isn’t long in coming.  
"Oh, hello Adrien!" Mme. Cheng smiles at him. "Everything ok?"  
“Yes, I was just wondering - has Mari come home? We were supposed to have a study date for physics, but she didn't show."  
Mme. Cheng frowned. "She hasn't, that I’ve noticed. Do you want to go up and check?"  
Adrien shakes his head. "No, that’s alright. I'll catch her in class."  
"Of course. And - here." She reaches over to hand him a cheesy pastry. "On the house, of course."  
Adrien smiles as he takes it. Not that it’s his _favourite_ (although it’s hard to choose a favourite) but it’s his most common, because Plagg doesn’t complain when he’s handed some instead of camembert. Too much. "Thank you."  
Walking from the bakery, he splits the pastry with Plagg as he heads back into the alley.  
Moments later, Chat Noir springs out over the roof tops. He turns for the Trocadéro next, because Alya had told him once that that was Mari’s favourite place. Maybe she’d be there.  
He doesn’t find Mari at the Trocadéro; instead, he finds Ladybug, perched up on the top of the building and staring out towards the Eiffel Tower.  
Landing behind her, he steps to her side. "is there an akuma about?" It was rare to see her, apart from patrols and akuma attacks.  
"Should there be?" She doesn't look up from the view before her.  
"No. Well - I'm worried, about a... You know the girl I worked with on the Evillustrator? Marinette? I saw her this morning, and she was looking... upset," he says carefully, unsure of how much to reveal.  
"Oh."  
Chat frowns. That was barely a reaction at all. "Is... Everything alright, My Lady?"  
“Marinette’s fine, Chat. I saw her a little while ago. She just… needed some time, I think.”  
“And you… Ladybug?” Chat hesitates, before using her actual title.  
She lets out a deep sigh. "I messed up, kitty." She pats the space beside her.  
Chat sits down, and his tail curls about behind Ladybug, careful not to encroach too much on her personal space. "What happened? If - if it isn't too revealing." There were boundaries to watch, after all. Even if he wishes they weren’t there at all.  
“It’s – nothing. Just… stupid stuff.” Ladybug shakes her head.  
Chat glances across at her, and feels the words rise in his throat again, as they do every minute they have quiet. He wants to tell her – in all serious, he wants her to know his truth, but…  
Now wasn’t the time. He could wait.  
“Oh, Kitty.” She leans against him. “Do you – do you ever wish you could tell someone everything?”  
“I wish I could tell you everything,” he answers, almost without thinking. He can’t help his heart leaping, as if this might be the moment he’s been waiting for. “I wish I could speak my mind and tell you _everything_.” There’s so much he wants to tell her, and sometimes it just got – so tangled and he got hung up on it, but really–  
Ladybug laughs, and it adds more warmth to his day, beginning to push aside his fears about Marinette. She hadn’t surfaced as an akuma, so maybe… maybe she just needed time. Maybe he wasn’t the one she needed to speak to about it.  
“Maybe some day, Kitty. Maybe some day.”  
“I can wait forever,” he replies, and he can’t stop the grin from spreading across his face.  
They sit there, in comfort and in silence, and Chat almost forgets that he has to get back to school.  
It’s Ladybug, of course, that moves first. She gently pulls away from the balance that they’ve created, and stands up. “Time to go, Kitty. I’m sure we’ve both got places to be.”  
“At your side, of course.” Chat Noir grins, standing and stretching.  
Ladybug laughs, flashing him a smile. “Patrol tonight?”  
“Of course.” He turns to watch her leave.  
He could wait forever, if it meant he could catch her name. He had time.

**Author's Note:**

> This whole album is like... love square central and it's ridiculous.
> 
> I'm @captainnightgale on tumblr too!


End file.
